1. Field of the Invention
The invention is described for assessing low fare search results in the travel industry.
2. Discussion of Background Information
To find data matching their needs in large amounts of data, online users use both query parameters and assessment parameters. Users query for answers satisfying some constraints. For instance, in a travel reservation context, a user may look for flights between an origin city and a destination city. In other contexts, a user may search for documents containing some keywords. They look for documents with a given subject matter. They query on the belief that such documents necessarily contain certain keywords. These are query parameters. Users also assess available alternatives for answers that best satisfy their needs. For example a traveller may ultimately select the cheapest direct flight to be on time at a meeting while not being too much in advance. Alternatively, if there is no direct flight, she may select a solution with the fewest connections. A document searcher may assess results knowing that relevant documents are likely to include some other words but that some relevant documents may not include any of those other words. These are assessment parameters.
The distinction between query parameters and assessment parameters is useful. The time for processing a query primarily depends on the query and not on the number of answers. Narrow requests including both query and assessment parameters usually return results that do not include many answers of interest. A wide request returns most answers of interest but also many irrelevant answers. Manually checking numerous answers is a time-consuming and error-prone process.
To facilitate answer assessment, it is known to further filter and sort data. In filtering, a user is shown only answers matching filtering criteria. In sorting, a user is shown answers sorted or ranked by sort parameters.
Prior filtering and sorting interfaces, especially for travel itineraries, have been constrained and sequential. That is, users are presented only limited filtering options and may be forced to re-submit queries. This leads to poor and inconsistent use of assessment parameters.